278 comments on Does the Hubbert Linearization Ever Work?
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278 comments on Does the Hubbert Linearization Ever Work?
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Btw I'd be happy to talk with WebHubbleTelescope on the issue.
He at least seems to understands the problem.
He rejected HL and generally I AGREE WITH HIM.
Sorry for the caps but your not listening.
Someone has already done a fantastic job of questioning HL
and he used the correct production profile.
Until you integrate his work I'm not sure what the heck your doing.
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2005/12/hubbert-linearization.html
One more quote from his blog.
So a good well reasoned rebuke of HL already exists.
And I'll say one more time generally I agree with him.
But its not clear that he can come up with a better model given the data we have. Not that he can't create a better model or a better model is possible simply do we have enough
data to support a better model.
So again does HL have problems yes here is the link that points out its flaws.
My answer as to why it works is simple.
Although the function changes that describes the actual production profile HL implicitly assumes that the rate of production is related to the overall URR via the logistic curve. Since we know from theoretical plate models that the time of elution or peak is related to the interaction of the
material with environment with a given geology if you steadily pump a field the time of peak does not change.
This means you can change the shape of the curve but your not actually able to change URR or the date of peak by much
without massive changes in the way the field is pumped.
In the case of chromatography they use Guassians and derive the interaction numbers i.e theoretical plates.
Now using a model that is well understood and tested the Theoretical Plate model and applying it to a oil field its says the following. If I drill a well into a porous geologic formation and a few wells around it. And first I pump some oil down it then start pumping water. The wells in a circle around the pumped well will get the oil in a Gaussian profile. The main body of the oil has a interaction with its it surroundings thats FIXED!
In the case of a field full of oil this block of oil is moving through a system that has immobile oil as part of its
environment but the behavior is no different. As you begin to produce a field the main driving force is oil pushing oil. Later its water pushing oil but the little Gaussian regions can't move till the ones behind them move.
This is my interpretation of what Fractional_Flow says and he
is also correct its the field geology that determines the peak.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2372#comment-170481
Hubbert chose the logistic and uses the rate to guess the URR. The choice of logistic is interesting and its not clear
in the least its the best and again its not clear that a better one exists given the data we have. Given that we are just doing a taylor expansion the exact shape of the curve are not important whats important or interesting is that HL works when the production is assumed to be a curve.
The examples you have given don't even behave correctly to the first taylor expansion term no wonder they blow up.
I'm only saying you need to use a production profile that can be taylor series expanded about its center point i.e it needs to look like a parabola to apply HL otherwise its junk. I don't need to do anything the work is already done and has been done for some time. You simply need to use a production profile thats reasonably close to what HL assumes.
Next since your generating data if you pick parabolas which are simple you can find one that gives a perfect match then vary the parabolas away from the perfect keeping the area under the curve or URR constant. one to see how much HL varies. Actually you can use any series of parameterized curves. The only restriction is they all have to have the same URR.
Your current work is not even close to being the right way to critique HL.
Until you integrate his work I'm not sure what the heck your doing.
What I am doing is showing case after case in which the HL failed. Do you think it might be too much to ask – given that you continue to insist that it works – for you to show me a case in which it would have worked? Thanks.
Your current work is not even close to being the right way to critique HL.
Show me the “right way.” I don’t really think that’s too much to ask. Show some cases. Plot them. Tell me the parameters that would indicate a peak to you. Don’t keep asking me to show you cases and then denigrate what you are given. Produce something yourself.
HL is reasonable if you produce max possible with regards to your URR, right?
Thats the assumption you childischly refuse to mention.
Your oilsville produces 10/5000 per year (was it?). Thats too low. Max would be 4/400 (or maybe 200 like Saudi, sounds familiar?). This is the most simple way I can put it. Change that in your spreadsheet and tell us what happens?
You sound slightly too closed to allowing other comments into your worldview at the moment. Are you always like that? Hard on debating? Do you ever yield a mm?
HL is reasonable if you produce max possible with regards to your URR, right?
Thats the assumption you childischly refuse to mention.
So, this is your response to "Show me"? You can't show me either. All of these insults and cast aspersions, and nobody can show me a case where the HL would have worked. Why is that?
Your oilsville produces 10/5000 per year (was it?). Thats too low.
How do you know what is too low? You are making unwarranted assumptions. Besides that, this wasn't the only case I modeled. What the case shows is that a flat production case - as Saudi has been for many years - will underpredict URR if production is constrained. Or do you believe that Saudi has been producing flat out for all those years?
You sound slightly too closed to allowing other comments into your worldview at the moment. Are you always like that?
Given that nobody is giving me an counter-examples to show when the HL would have worked and how you would have determined that, right now I have no reason to question my worldview. Show me a case and make me question it. I am quite open-minded, as some posters on the board who actually know me can verify.
Even though I make no claim to following the math, what I've been gleaning from this whole series of exchanges is that Hubbert noticed that the way in which oil fields were drilled and developed in an unconstrained market tended to follow a familiar pattern. He didn't know the URR, but he had enough experience to make an educated guess. That pattern has seemed to fit in other unconstrained markets.
As I see it, we don't have the info to have as good a feel for the URR of KSA, so we've seen modelers fitting the curves as if KSA is unconstrained and choosing from a fairly wide range of possible URRs.
It seems to me what Robert is doing is significantly constraining Oilsville production and then saying that because HL doesn't work in unconstrained markets, it doesn't work at all.
I have not been following this closely so forgive me if someone has already beaten this to death, but the only cases where HL should work, conceptually, are where production is only constrained by physical geology. Where the field or province operators are producing as fast as they can, or responding to smoothly rising demand (the curve shape is supposed to model the reservoir dynamics). We know this is not the case for Texas/lower 48, Saudi Arabia and Russia so I do not see why we should expect it to work there. That's why it also should not work for your thought experiments (above). If world demand rose smoothly and no one withheld production to control prices (or for whatever), we might expect it to work in the aggregate. It is not surprising that such a simple model does not work for such a complex system.